Seville part 2
Wednesday was much sunnier, though still chillier than one would expect of Seville in April. Not as bad as the middle of Spain, though, where the TV news was showing an array of presenters standing amazed in front of thick snow, saying - as far as we could tell from our non-existant Spanish, filtered through memories of Latin O level - "Snow! In April! Error! Error!" and "Will this winter ever end?"
We wanted to go to Italica, the ruins of a Roman city not many miles from Seville. Various companies offered half day excursions, but since it was only 30 minutes away by the frequent public bus, costing only a few Euros, we went that route. Like any such site in the UK, it was teeming with school parties, who seemed to be able to tell from a hundred yards that we were British. "Hello. How are you?" said several little children as we passed, in very well spoken English. (Presumably we both go round with invisible "I am British!" banners displayed above our heads, since we were consisently identified as British everywhere we went, even before we opened our mouths.)
Much of the city was still beneath ground, but plenty of mosaic-filled houses had been excavated, although there was no English guidebook or English notices to help us make sense of it, except in the most recently excavated areas. Bilingual signs seems to be a feature only of the most recent attractions. There would presumably have been rather more mosaic-filled houses, had people like the Condesa de Lebrija not nicked them for their own houses.
I posted close-ups of several of the mosaics in my Creatures post, but here are a couple of wider views, in context.
The amphitheatre has recently become something of an attraction, due to it appearing as the Dragon Pit in Game of Thrones. They are filming there again as we speak, and were already busy preparing the set. I read on a fan site afterwards that there was apparently a photography ban, but I didn't see any notices at the time. Not that anything can be deduced from what we saw.
The Roman theatre down the road was closed, so we headed back to Seville, where we ate some massively over-priced cheese and ham in the cafe just across from our apartment. Although it was warm in the sun, there was a chilly breeze, whose occasion strong gusts led to a constant rain of bread rolls and hurtling bread baskets.
Then to the Casa de Pilatos - mudejar (post Reconquista Moorish style) architecture crossed with an Italian Renaissance mansion, built in the 1520s. It was great! We were issued with an English language audio guide that went into immense detail about every room. It was all spoken in an accent that sounded entirely like well-spoken English ("Is Gandalf doing the narration?" I wondered), but was clearly speaking English written by a non-native speaker, full of strange constructions that someone left one at the end of a 10 minute narrative with absolutely no memory of anything that had been said, since one had got distracted by such phrases as "the homogenity of the architectonics."
Once again, we paid extra for a tour of upstairs, heading up the very impressive staircase, but one again, the guide whisked us around far too fast, and kept on starting her talk on a new room before half the party had managed to leave the previous one.
Nice grounds, too.
After that, we decided to take advantage of the sun by finding a nice warm sun trap in the Jardines de Murillo, out the back of the Alcazar, beside the Columbus monument.
After a quick dinner in the apartment, we went out to a flamenco show in the flamenco museum. My research had told me to arrive just over 30 minutes early, so we did, which meant that we could get front row seats, with the feet stamping and clashing just inches from our noses. Their foot stamping is SO impressive. Flamenco, we decided, was like super-charged tap dancing, with added angst.
Thursday was another day of torrential rain, so we went back to the garden by the Plaza de Espana, and went to the archaeological museum. The prehistoric gallery was closed for refurbishment, so the visit was very dominated by Romans. There was very little English interpretation, but once again, we could resort to the internet in our pocket. WHY was there a wall of feet, for example? (Conclusion of the internet: nobody knows, but probably ritual. Or votive, anyway. They were found in the Italica amphitheatre.)
Yet another mosaic: Bacchus and Ariadne, plus tigers.
After that, we went to the museum of folklore and costume, but the costume section was closed. The folklore part was mostly traditional crafts - blacksmithing, basket-making, lace-making (LOTS of lace-making. Endless rooms of lace-making) etc.
Then a nice sandwich lunch in a cafe, where I was forced once again to feel sad about how impossible it is to get tea in Spain. I had chai latte, in the end, as the only near alternative. We couldn't even have proper tea in our own apartment, since the kettle cut out before it was boiling, and the English breakfast tea bags available in the local supermarkets - provided almost as an afterthought, I felt - were tiny, and fell apart if prodded. Two teabags could make something half way passing as weak tea, but it was not really good enough.
Then to the art gallery, full of late medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art.
We'd booked train tickets for Cordoba online, to be collected from a ticket machine at the station, but I wanted the reassurance of knowing that we had them safely in our hands, and also wanted to discover how long it took to walk to the station. So that's where we went in the early evening, after the rain stopped. Tickets retrieved, we returned to have dinner near the Alcazar. My starter - a rich tomato cold soup, garnished with bits of ham and chopped egg - was absolutely gorgeous. With some guilt, I discovered afterwards that it was not, in fact, the gazpacho I'd ordered, but the salmorejo that Pellinor had ordered. Oops.
I wimped out and ordered my meal by pointing. Pellinor tried to order in Spanish, with the result that we almost ended up with a bottle of wine AND two glasses of wine, got fizzy instead of still water, and he had coffee rather than the custard tart he thought he was ordering. There's probably a moral there.
On Friday, we caught the super-fast train to Cordoba - just 45 minutes. It was raining when we left, but the rain had stopped when we got there. The pride of Cordoba is the mesquita, which is really quite amazing. Initially site of a Visigothic church, it became a mosque in the 8th century. It was much expanded in a similar style over the next few centuries, until the Christians got it and turned it into a cathedral, although they left a lot of the original features. Overdone chapels line the perimeter, but not enough to spoil the amazing effect of the place.
In the older parts, the two-colour effect is caused by having alternating bands of different stone. In the later parts, shown second, the colours were painted on.
Islamic archtecture turned into a Christian chapel:
A decorated ceiling.
They even left the mihrab, which marks the direction of Mecca.
But then, right in the middle, they dumped the heart of a massively ornate Renaissance cathedral, with domes and all.
Decoration on the exterior:
Afterwards - after a quick lunch sitting on the wall, eating a very solid and meat-filled local delicacy from a deli (a Cordoban pasty?) - we went across the river by way of the Roman Bridge, heading to the 12th century Calahorra tower. Inside was a museum and audio-visual experience devoted to the inter-relation and co-operation of Christianity, Islam and Judaism in medieval Cordoba.
A view from the top of the tower, showing an angry river and an angry sky. The threatened rain did not materialise, though.
Then we went to Cordoba's Alcazar, which was much more of a Renaissance affair than the Seville one, and nothing like as large or impressive, although the gardens were nice.
This was billed as "Caesar's banana tree." No further explanation was forthcoming.
Back in Seville, we had some excellent tapas near the cathedral, probably thanks to the fact that nobody tried to be clever and order in Spanish.
On Saturday morning, we packed up and left, leaving our bags in a left luggage facility to allow us to visit the Palacio de las Dueñas, a Renaissance palace, still inhabited by the family of the Duke of Alba, a Spanish family with the rather unexpected name of "FitzJames Stuart," thanks to a connection with an illegitimate son of James II. With the feria - a massive April fair - due to start in a day or two, the household were busy test driving all their horses, taking them out for a spin with their fancy harnesses.
Rather annoyingly, this last day was the first day that left like Seville ought to feel in April - i.e. warm enough to sit outside with bare arms, but not so hot that you wilt. Taking advantage of that fact, we had lunch outside, just across from the cathedral, where quite a procession of fancy horse-drawn carriages went past, full of finely dressed people, either heading for weddings or practising for the Feria.
And then to catch the bus to the airport, where we arrived stupidly early, since the shuttle bus turned up just seconds after we got to the stop, and traffic was light. And then home.
Within days, of course, it was warmer and sunnier in Cowes than it had ever been in Seville. Oh well.